The stench of blood choked the air.
Charred bark and cracked earth bore witness to the carnage that had unfolded. Trees stood broken and burning, like torches in the dimming evening, their skeletons clawing at the darkening sky.
Craters, so shallow, others deeper, scarred the forest floor where explosions of mana and fury had ripped through soil and root.
Corpses lay scattered like discarded offerings—bodies of predator-ranked mana beasts, twisted in death.
Jaws hung slack.
Fangs snapped.
Claws torn.
Blood pooled in the crevices between stone and dirt, thick and black and still faintly steaming.
And amidst the slaughter, slouched against a half-burnt log, was Ian.
He sat unmoving, blood soaked and caked across his skin. So of it was his. Most of it was theirs.
His body wore the aftermath like a morbid trophy—skin torn in old places, stitched anew by the twisted miracle of his healing ability. Bone and sinew had been crushed, burned, torn, and nded again, and again… and again.
Before him, his twin daggers were buried into the ground, planted like the graves of all who had fallen to them.
He wasn't trembling.
He wasn't gasping.
He was still.
But he wasn't alone.
Beyond the ruin, hidden between the trees not yet felled, he could feel them. Watching. Breathing. The low growl of hunger smothered by an unnatural hesitation. Predator-ranked beasts that had once lunged without pause, now lingered in the dark—silent.
However now they weren't hesitating because they feared Eli.
They hesitated because they feared him.
Then, like a shift in wind, he heard the sound—footsteps.
asured. Calm. Coming closer.
"You've been busy," ca Eli's voice, casual as ever.
Ian didn't look at him. He didn't need to.
"I only leave you a couple days," Eli continued, surveying the battlefield, "and you go and destroy our entire campsite."
Ian scoffed, a raspy breath scraping from his throat.
"My bad."
Eli chuckled as he stepped closer, boot crunching down on blackened earth and broken fang. He stood for a mont, taking it in—the field of death, the burned canopy, and the man who caused it all.
"Did you win?" Ian asked, eyes still forward.
Eli smirked. "Of course I did. Easily."
Ian turned finally, glancing at the blood splattered across Eli's torn cloak, his sleeve cut at the shoulder, a deep scar partially visible beneath.
"'Easily' sounds like a stretch," Ian muttered.
Eli groaned as he slumped beside him, resting back against the sa log. "Please. Once I got through the horde of beasts he threw at , the bastard went down in one strike."
Ian raised an eyebrow but didn't argue. He was too tired. Too wrung out.
Eli reached into his coat and retrieved a crumpled box of cigarettes, pulling one free with his lips and offering the box toward Ian.
Ian stared at it a second, then pulled one out and placed it between his own.
A flick, then another, and finally—the fla.
Eli lit his smoke and handed the lighter over. Ian followed suit, the paper catching instantly. Together, they exhaled the grey fog, the smoke curling around their sweat-streaked faces like whispers.
"So," Ian murmured, "what's my next training?"
Eli inhaled deeply, then let the smoke trickle through his nose. "Training? No. You're past that now. The real question is… do you think you're ready?"
Ian didn't answer imdiately. He looked down at his own hand, letting the smoke dance between his fingers.
And then… he ignited it.
A soft, eerie woosh echoed as a dull grey fla blood in his palm. It didn't burn like a normal fire. It crackled with silence, like a soul whispering its last breath.
[Soul Fla]
He rembered it. The mont it awakened.
In the middle of chaos, surrounded on all sides. The beasts ca like waves.
Jaws wide. Eyes red. Fangs hungry.
He'd cut through the first one, his speed a blur of bloody dance. He rolled under the pounce of a massive catlike mana beast with dark plated scales and drove a dagger up beneath its chin, tearing through muscle and brain.
But another ca. Then another.
He was clawed through the ribs—once. Twice. He fell to one knee, a breath wheezing out.
He should've died. But he didn't.
Sohow soway, he didn't.
His soul flared, and the wounds began to nd before he hit the dirt.
Another ca barreling forward, a beast with the face of a boar and the limbs of a gorilla. Ian rolled, losing his footing but hurling a dagger into its eye before retrieving it mid-leap with a bloody rip.
Each kill fueled him. Each soul absorbed added a great more power. But it wasn't enough.
Not until he felt it—sothing deeper. Sothing hot and strange stirring inside his chest. Not just strength. Not just healing.
Mana erupting through him.
When the beast with the serpentine tongue and the skeletal tail lunged from above, Ian raised a palm—and for the first ti, he willed sothing into the world.
A burst of grey fire exploded outward, incinerating the thing's face and sending its flaming corpse tumbling to the ground.
Then more ca.
The fight beca a blur.
Not perfect. Not clean.
Brutal. Bloody. Gory.
His stomach was opened. His throat grazed. His bones shattered by crushing jaws, nded only by the sheer force of his soul essence working overti.
And yet he didn't fall.
———
His lips curved into a grin.
"Yeah," he said, watching the fire dance. "I'm ready."
Reviews
All reviews (0)